¹ Stigler, George, “The Influence of Events and Policies on Economic Theory,” American Economic Review 50Google Scholar, Papers and Proceedings of the Seventy-second Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May 1960): 40. Stigler writes (p. 37), “At the height of the industrial revolution, when great technological advances were crowding hard upon one another, the main tradition of classical economics treated the state of the arts as a datum. The arts were held to be subject to sporadic improvements, but not of a magnitude comparable to the force of diminishing returns in agriculture. Here, then, the almost overwhelming characteristic of economic life was excluded from economic theory.”

² Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 79–121, 195–205.Google Scholar

³ For railroad freight rates, see North, Douglass C., Growth and Welfare in the American Past (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), 111Google Scholar; population and its distribution is given in Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. and Tedlow, Richard, The Coming of Managerial Capitalism: A Casebook on the History of American Economic Institutions (Homewood, III., 1985), 96Google Scholar. The founding dates of companies are given by McCraw, Thomas K., “American Capitalism,” in McCraw, Thomas K., ed., Creating Modern Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 321–23Google Scholar. On the merger wave, see Lamoreaux, Naomi, The Great Merger Movement in American Business (Cambridge, U.K., 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ McCraw, ed., Creating Modern Capitalism, 320.

⁵ Porter, Glenn, The Rise of Big Business, 1860–1910, 1st ed. (New York, 1973), 43–71Google Scholar; Chandler, The Visible Hand, 209–83.

⁶ Adams, Charles Francis Jr. and Adams, Henry, Chapters of Erie and Other Essays (New York, 1886)Google Scholar, quoted in Porter, The Rise of Big Business, 38. On regulation and antitrust during this period, see Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Thorelli, Hans Birger, The Federal Antitrust Policy (Baltimore, 1954)Google Scholar; McCraw, Thomas K., Prophets of Regulation (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 1–56Google Scholar; Young, James Harvey, Pure Food (Princeton, 1991)Google Scholar; Coppin, Clayton and High, Jack, The Politics of Purity (Ann Arbor, 1996)Google Scholar. For a comprehensive treatment of the effects of big business on law, politics, and the economy, see Sklar, Martin J., The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916 (Cambridge, U.K., 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ GDP figures and price indexes are given in Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, pt. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1975), 200–31Google Scholar. GDP is expressed in constant 1958 dollars. Total factor productivity numbers are taken from McCraw, ed., Creating Modern Capitalism, 320. On total factor productivity and entrepreneurship, see Harberger, Arnold, “A Vision of the Growth Process,” American Economic Review 88 (Mar. 1998): 1–32Google Scholar, and High, Jack, “The Roles of Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth,” in Entrepreneurship in the Spatial Economy, ed. Groot, Henri de, Nijkamp, Peter, and Stough, Roger (Cheltenham, U.K, 2004), 46–77.Google Scholar

⁸ Walker, Francis A., The Wages Question (London, 1876), 244–45Google Scholar; Walker, Francis A., Political Economy, 3rd ed. (New York, 1887), 60–61, 74–75Google Scholar. See also Walker, Francis A., “American Manufactures,” Princeton Review (Jan.–June 1883)Google Scholar. For a summary of Walker's contributions to entrepreneurial theory, see Weber, A. F., “American Economists of Today,” New England Magazine 21 (Nov. 1899): 260.Google Scholar

⁹ Schumpeter, Joseph A., History of Economic Analysis (Oxford, 1954), 866Google Scholar; Newcomb, Simon, “The Organization of Labor,” Princeton Review 1 (May 1880): 398.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Sherwood, Sidney, “The Functions of the Entrepreneur,” Yale Review 6 (Nov. 1897): 233–50Google Scholar; Sherwood, , “Influence of the Trust in the Development of Undertaking Genius,” Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd ser., 1 (Feb. 1900): 163–76Google Scholar; quotations are from the latter article, 174, 175; see also Newcomb, Simon, Principles of Political Economy (New York, 1885), 101–3Google Scholar; Clark, John B., “The Limits of Competition,” Political Science Quarterly 2 (Mar. 1887): 52–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ely, Richard T., An Introduction to Political Economy (New York, 1889), 170Google Scholar; Fetter, Frank A., Principles of Economics (New York, 1904), 265–72Google Scholar; Taussig, Frank, Principles of Economics, 2 vols. (New York, 1911), 1: 105–6Google Scholar; 2: 158–71; Davenport, Herbert Joseph, Outlines of Economic Theory (New York, 1896), 151Google Scholar; Commons, John R., The Distribution of Wealth (New York, 1893), 172.Google Scholar

¹¹ Morgan, Mary S., “Competing Notions of ‘Competition’ in Late Nineteenth-Century American Economics,” History of Political Economy 25 (Winter 1993): 563–604CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Leonard, Thomas J., “‘A Certain Rude Honesty’: John Bates Clark as a Pioneering Neoclassical Economist,” History of Political Economy 35 (Fall 2003): 521–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² See High, Jack, ed., Competition (Cheltenham, 2001), i–xvii, 3–84.Google Scholar

¹³ Hadley, Arthur T., Railroad Transportation: Its History and Laws (New York, 1885), 40, 70–76Google Scholar. Pricing below average cost was often called “cutthroat” competition; see, for example, Fisher, Irving, Principles of Economics (New York, 1910), 317–21.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Clark, “The Limits of Competition,” 55–59; Galbraith, John Kenneth, American Capitalism (Boston, 1952).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Clark, J. B., The Control of Trusts (New York, 1901), 13, 28Google Scholar; Clark, John Bates, “Trusts,” Political Science Quarterly 15 (June 1900): 186CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Giddings, Franklin, “The Persistence of Competition,” Political Science Quarterly 2 (Mar. 1887): 62–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Johnson, Alvin S., Rent in Modern Economic Theory: An Essay in Distribution (New York, 1903), 101–2Google Scholar. Robert Dorfman discusses this aspect of Johnson's work in The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 4 vols. (New York, 1946–1959), 3: 421Google Scholar. In a perceptive essay, Thomas C. Leonard argues that Clark's approach to trusts is essentially neoclassical. See “‘A Certain Rude Honesty,’” 541–48.

¹⁶ Henry Carter Adams, “Trusts,” Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd ser., 5, Papers and Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting, pt. 2 (May 1904): 96– 97. Adams developed his ideas on trusts two years before his address to the American Economics Association. In a letter to F. W. Taussig, 5 Mar. 1901, Adams wrote, “The recent movements toward industrial combinations seem to contradict everything that I have held relative to the persistence of competition. I take no stock whatever in Giddings's and Clark's view of this subject. I must therefore, for my own satisfaction, work this subject out.” Box 13, Henry Carter Adams Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (hereafter HCAP). See also the folder labeled “Trusts,” box 25, HCAP.

¹⁷ Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of Business Enterprise (New York, 1904). The quotation is from p. 177.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Adams, Henry Carter, “The Relation of the State to Industrial Action,” 1887, reprinted in Dorfman, Joseph, ed., Two Essays: Relation of the State to Industrial Action and Economics and Jurisprudence (New York, 1969), 91–120Google Scholar; Davenport, Outlines, 152; Clark, J. B., “The Moral Outcome of Labor Troubles,” New Englander and Yale Review 45 (June 1886): 535Google Scholar; Clark, J. B., “Business Ethics, Past and Present,” New Englander 38 (Mar. 1879): 165–67Google Scholar; Clark, J. B., “Non-competitive Economics,” New Englander and Yale Review 41 (Nov. 1882): 837–47. See also Adams, “Labor and the Monopoly Problem,” box 25, HCAP.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Sherwood, Sidney, “Influence of the Trust in the Development of Undertaking Genius,” Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd ser., 1 (Feb. 1900): 163–76.Google Scholar

²⁰ Jenks, Jeremiah W., The Trust Problem (New York, 1900), 21–43Google Scholar. Jenks also pointed out the costs of competition in “Capitalistic Monopolies and Their Relation to the State,” Political Science Quarterly 9 (Sept. 1894): 488–91.Google Scholar

²¹ Gunton, George, Principles of Social Economics (New York, 1891), 406–10; Davenport, Outlines, 204–5; Hadley, Economics, 159–64; Sherwood, “Influence of the Trusts,” 167.Google Scholar

²² Smith, Richmond Mayo, “American Labor Statistics,” Political Science Quarterly 1 (Mar. 1886): 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ Walker, Francis A., “The Wage-Fund Theory,” North American Review 246 (Jan. 1875): 86–119Google Scholar; Walker, Francis A., The Wages Question (London, 1876)Google Scholar; Taussig, F. W., “The Employer's Place in Distribution,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 10, no. 1 (Oct. 1895): 67–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taussig, F. W., Wages and Capital: An Examination of the Wages Fund Doctrine (New York, 1896)Google Scholar. Fetter, Frank A. criticized Taussig in Political Science Quarterly 12 (Mar. 1897): 146–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁴ Clark, John B., “The Possibility of a Scientific Law of Wages,” Publications of the American Economic Association 4 (Mar. 1889): 44, 49Google Scholar; Wood, Stuart, “A New View of the Theory of Wages I,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 3 (Oct. 1888): 60–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wood, Stuart, “A New View of the Theory of Wages II,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 3, no. 4 (July 1889): 462–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wood, Stuart, “The Theory of Wages,” Publications of the American Economic Association 4 (Mar. 1889): 5–35Google Scholar; Wood, Stuart, “A Critique of Wage Theories,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 1 (Jan. 1891): 426–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, John B., “Distribution as Determined by a Law of Rent,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 5 (Apr. 1891): 289–318CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Clark came very close to articulating marginal productivity theory in 1883 in “Recent Theories of Wages,” New Englander and Yale Review 42 (May 1883): 359–61Google Scholar; Carver, Thomas Nixon, “The Theory of Wages Adjusted to Recent Theories of Value,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 8 (July 1894): 377–402 (quotation on p. 399).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁵ Davenport, Herbert, Value and Distribution (Chicago, 1907), 439–79.Google Scholar

²⁶ Veblen, Thorstein, “Industrial and Pecuniary Employments,” Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd ser., 2, no. 1. (Feb. 1901): 190–235. Quotations are from p. 229.Google Scholar

²⁷ Veblen, Thorstein, “On the Nature of Capital,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 22, no. 4 (Aug. 1908): 518, 525CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This aspect of Veblen's thought is emphasized in Hodgson, Geoffrey M., How Economics Forgot History (London, 2001), 149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁸ Veblen, Thorstein, “On the Nature of Capital: Investment, Intangible Assets, and the Pecuniary Magnate,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 23, no. 1 (Nov. 1908): esp. 116–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Fetter, Principles of Economics, 205–25; Fisher, Irving, Elementary Principles of Economics (New York, 1916), 440–44Google Scholar; Seligman, Edwin R. A., Principles of Economics (New York, 1905), 411–19Google Scholar; Taussig, F. W., “Outlines of a Theory of Wages,” American Economic Association Quarterly, 3rd ser., 11, no. 1 (Apr. 1910): 136–56; Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, 939.Google Scholar

³⁰ Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 411–12; Clark, “The Possibility of a Scientific Law of Wages,” 53, 61.

³¹ Clark, “The Possibility of a Scientific Law of Wages,” 61–62.

³² Taussig, F. W., “The Employer's Place in Distribution,” uarterly Journal of Economics 10, no. 1 (Oct. 1895): 93Google Scholar; Clark, J. B., “The Moral Outcome of Labor Troubles,” New Englander and Yale Review 45 (June 1886): 533–37Google Scholar; Clark, “On What Principles Should a Court of Arbitration Proceed in Determining the Rate of Wages,” Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd ser., 8, no. 1 (Feb 1907): 23–28Google Scholar; Hadley, Economics, 359–60; Ely, Richard T., The Labor Movement in America (New York, 1886), 92–119Google ScholarPubMed; Arthur Hadley, Economics, 354–55; Newcomb, Simon, A Plain Man's Talk on the Labor Question (New York, 1886), 130–31; Walker, Political Economy, 372.Google Scholar

³³ Walker, “The Wage-Fund Theory,” 86–119; Walker, The Wages Question.

³⁴ See the following by Clark, John B.: “Profits Under Modern Conditions,” Political Science Quarterly 2, no. 4 (Dec. 1887): 603–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Distribution as Determined by a Law of Rent,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 5, no. 3 (Apr. 1891): 289–318CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Statics and the Dynamics of Distribution,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 6, no. 1 (Oct. 1891): 111–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and The Distribution of Wealth: A Theory of Wages, Interest, and Profits (New York, 1900).Google Scholar

³⁵ Walker, Francis A., “The Doctrine of Rent, and the Residual Claimant Theory of Wages,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 5, no. 4 (July 1891): 437.Google Scholar

³⁶ Hawley, Frederick B., “The Fundamental Error of ‘Kapital und Kapitalzins,’” Quarterly Journal of Economics 6, no. 3 (Apr. 1892): 283CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also by Hawley, : “The Risk Theory of Profit,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 7, no. 4 (July 1893): 459–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Enterprise and Profit,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 15, no. 1 (Nov. 1900): 75–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 411–12. See also Seager, Henry, Introduction to Economics (New York, 1904): 488Google Scholar; Seligman, Edwin R. A., Principles of Economics (New York, 1906): 95, 329Google Scholar. For an analysis of profit theory in the U.S., see Hopkins, William S., “Profit in American Economic Theory,” Review of Economic Studies 1, no. 1 (Oct. 1933): 60–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁸ Carver, Thomas Nixon, The Distribution of Wealth (New York, 1913), 266–67.Google Scholar

³⁹ Andrews, E. Benjamin, “Trusts According to Official Investigations,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 3 (Jan. 1889): 117–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ Jenks, Jeremiah, “The Development of the Whiskey Trust,” Political Science Quarterly 4 (June 1889): 296–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “The Michigan Salt Association,” Political Science Quarterly 3 (Mar. 1888): 78–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sklar, Martin J., The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916 (Cambridge, U.K., 1988), 60–61, summarizes Jenks's views on trusts.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴¹ Clark, John B., “Experience of the Sugar Monopoly,” The Review, 18 Feb. 1892Google Scholar; “The Linseed Oil Trust,” The Review, 25 Feb. 1892; “The Whiskey Trust,” The Review, 25 Feb. 1892; “The Lead Trust,” The Review, 10 Mar. 1892; “The Cordage Trust,” The Review, 17 Mar. 1892; “Standard Oil,” The Review, 7 Apr. 1892; John Bates Clark papers, Rare Book and Manuscripts Collection, Columbia University, folder 1886–94, box 16. I have been unable to locate the publication in which Clark's manuscripts appeared.

⁴² Jenks, “Whiskey Trust,” 297.

⁴³ Jones, Edward D., “The Manufacturer and the Domestic Market,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 25, Business Management and Finance (Jan. 1905): 1–20. The quotation is from p. 7.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Morgan, “Competing Notions of ‘Competition’ in Late Nineteenth-Century American Economics,” 563–604; Leonard, “‘A Certain Rude Honesty,’” 539–40.

⁴⁵ Veblen denied the validity of marginal productivity theory, but he explicitly acknowledged that some activities of large businesses were productive; “It is not hereby intended to depreciate the services rendered to the community by the captain of industry in his management of business. Such services are no doubt rendered and are also no doubt of substantial value.” Veblen implicitly relied on some theory of productivity, which is why we may look on his exploitation theory as complementary to the entrepreneurial theory developed by Walker, Clark, et al., even though Veblen himself was somewhat dismissive of those theories. Veblen, Thorstein, “Industrial and Pecuniary Employments,” Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd ser., 2, no. 1. (Feb. 1901): 213n.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ See Foss, Nicolai J., The Austrian School and Modern Economics: Essays in Reassessment, Copenhagen Studies in Economics and Management (Copenhagen, 1994), 149Google Scholar; Foss, Nicolai J., “The Theory of the Firm: An Introduction to Themes and Contributions,” in The Theory of the Firm: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, ed. Foss, Nicolai J., vol. 1 (London, 2000)Google Scholar. Knight, Frank H., Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (Chicago, 1971; 1st ed. 1921).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., Amatori, Franco, and Hikino, Takashi, Big Business and the Wealth of Nations (Cambridge, U.K., 1997), 26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As suggestive as Jones's analysis was, it did not earn him a mention in Joseph Dorfman's encyclopedic Economic Mind in America, the third volume of which covers from 1865 to 1918. Jones went on to consider economic organization in detail in Jones, Edward D., The Administration of Industrial Enterprise (New York, 1916).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Fetter, Frank A., “The Next Decade of Economic Theory,” Publications of the American Economic Association, 3rd ser., 2, no. 1 (Feb. 1901): 243. The quotation marks paraphrase Sklar's The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism. Sklar's work is primarily about policy, but he clearly recognizes that big business brought about changes to economic theory. See pp. 57–78, 247–56.Google Scholar